Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday July 01, 2011 @09:53AM
from the homeland-security-should-stay-out-of-my-pants dept.

An anonymous reader writes "An editorial at Forbes calls for the dismantling of the TSA, pointing to recent headlines as the latest examples of 'security theater' at its worst. From the article:
'The problem isn't that the TSA is harassing the wrong people. The problem is that the TSA is harassing anyone. The TSA is encroaching on fundamental liberties and providing no discernable benefit. ... Naturally, the TSA responds to incidents like these by saying that the agents are highly trained and that they have followed proper procedure. This indicates a signal failing for the agency: if "doing it by the book" involves touching people in ways that would be considered sexual assault in virtually any other context or telling a 90-year old breast cancer survivor to remove her bra lest it contain explosives (as happened to a friend's grandmother), then the book needs to be shredded and rewritten. Better yet, it needs to be replaced with a competitive market for air travel in which the airports, the airways, and the airliners are in private hands. Some might object that private firms will have incentives to cut corners on safety. It is a legitimate concern, but competitive mechanisms tend to weed this out.'"

This is just a free market troll. Competitive mechanisms favor the group that cuts costs, reduces quality and undercuts the higher quality competitors. The end result is the dodgy group raising prices sky high once a monopoly has been achieved.

You forgot one thing: If you cut too many corners then you might find your passengers vote for your competitor (with their wallets).

The real problem with the TSA is that even a child can see they're not actually increasing security. Mostly they're just making scanner manufacturers/shareholders rich and keeping unemployment figures down. All at taxpayer expense and passenger inconvenience.

They could be collecting thousands of pounds of explosives every day and we would never know about it. There could have been 20 major airline bomb incidents this year that were stopped and we would never know.

Or there could be nothing. With no information most people are assuming that there has been nothing. I have heard from "reliable sources" that the TSA has actually prevented some significant incidents but no information beyond that. If t

They could be collecting thousands of pounds of explosives every day and we would never know about it. There could have been 20 major airline bomb incidents this year that were stopped and we would never know.

and using that argument there could have been 20 bombings that happened and they gagged the media and everyone involved..

think about it - in your normal day there are only 1-200 people you see - normally less than 20 you converse with - the rest is media/net.. prove the statement wrong?

after reading that - take your frame of mind and read your statement..

Come on, any major bomb or hint of a bomb, and everything gets shut down for several hours... I really doubt the TSA would discover a bomb and just say "oh good job we caught that one. Next!"... If there had been 20 bombs this year, there would have been 20 airport shutdowns, 20 airspace shut downs, and 20 instances of week-long yapping of every moron who can get on TV...

To play devil's advocate here... Aren't these same "competitive mechanisms" the same arguments that are regularly cited as the reason open source software is better than closed source? Whoever makes the best product or implementation wins? The only difference being that it is somehow assumed that profit is never a motive for any open source project. (Easily proven false, but that is always the assumption...)

I agree that the article is in fact standard issue Forbes free market trolling.. but you should reall

In a system where safety rating is part of the commercial offering, you'll end up with cheap, dangerous, low margin airlines because (and it's a shame it has to be said so often) enlightened self interest is a myth.

of course the rest of this stuff is spot on. The TSA should be disbanded.

In a system where safety rating is part of the commercial offering, you'll end up with cheap, dangerous, low margin airlines because (and it's a shame it has to be said so often) enlightened self interest is a myth.

This is a pretty good argument for changing the TSA to a regulatory/testing body and leaving security to the airports and airlines. Then the TSA could send undercover threats to test the security systems put in place at the various airports. Publish the results and fine violators. Simple.

The media tried to play this role with the TSA security apparatus at various times. They had limited success - largely they seem to have been met with resistance or even hostility, despite exposing weaknesses in the sec

All animals are created equal, yet some animals are more equal than others.

The problem is that those people that created the TSA should have to go through this type of security screening. Make these invasive procedures personal to those in power. They'll have a change of mind when Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and Nancy Pelosi are getting groped instead of hearing stories about some random grandmother. Too bad those three women always fly privately. I guess we're all equal under the law unless you get elected to office.

You politicians are what you make of them. Your government departments are what you let them get away with.

The difference between a slave and a free person is the right to say no. Next time you feel that authority oversteps it's demands upon you, don't be a bloody slave, simply but firmly state, "Freedom, I wont".

Either you are a free citizen of a country with constitution that provides you with inalienable rights or you are a slave destined to spend the rest of life afraid to say 'NO' and, condemning your family to the same.

Show some genitalia by refusing to have it radiated and exposed or groped, just say "NO".

They'll have a change of mind when Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and Nancy Pelosi are getting groped instead of hearing stories about some random grandmother. Too bad those three women always fly privately. I guess we're all equal under the law unless you get elected to office.

Technically, they fly publicly. It's just us normal people dont get to fly with them. Those flights are paid out of our tax dollars.

And if Congress had to participate in Social Security, ObamaCare, or any one of a thousand indignities and injustices inflicted upon the American people, they wouldn't have lasted 15 minutes in debate, let alone get passed. Maybe we need to take a cue from Libya, Egypt, and Dhubai and get rid of the privileged overlords.

Congress does participate in Social Security. What made you think they do not? They pay income and FICA taxes on their salaries just like anyone else.

As for "ObamaCare," you are probably right that it wouldn't have been passed if Congress were forced to participate, since that would mean giving up their free government health care and being forced to buy private insurance instead.

This isn't an either-or situation. The TSA's perpetrated a number of civil liberties violations, yes. On the other hand, some kind of free market libertarian fantasy should not come at the expense of public safety either.

The TSA needs to be re-imagined, but we shouldn't revert to the system we had before. But c'mon. A free market system has no incentive to improve in this kind of situation (oh, you died in a terrorist attack? Fine, go to some other airport next time!)

The TSA has done no better and no worse than pre-9/11 airport security in terms of hijacking/terrorist attempts.

But it has had a noticeable, negative impact on traveler experience, dignity and basic rights both legal and social. I'm hardly anything approaching a"free-market" advocate but what we have now does nothing but cost taxpayers money. I have no problem paying taxes in general but I'd at least like to see some tangible benefit from it, y'know? We can go back to "normal" airport security and put that money towards investigative efforts where it will actually do some good.

Let's be honest, if a terrorist plot gets to the point where the airport security catches him, we have already failed. Next step is to just blow themselves up while waiting in line to be groped... all the airport security goons in the world couldn't stop that. We don't need the TSA.=Smidge=

Why shouldn't we revert to the system we had before? The only reason that the 9/11 hijackers were successful was because the passengers on three of the four planes assumed that they would be flown to some destination such as Cuba, negotiations would be conducted, the hijackers would release the passengers for some consideration and the passengers would be flown to the destination of their choice. The only harm being the loss of several hours to several days.
Now people know that that outcome is not likely to be the case and they will attempt to overwhelm the hijackers.
However, my recommendation would be to revert to the basic system we had on 9/11, except that the TSA gets reorganized as security inspectors. The job of the TSA would be to inspect the security procedures of various airlines (including passenger screening) and fine those airlines that failed certain objective standards (such as allowing a gun onto the plane--something the TSA has on several occassions failed to prevent).

I agree. Privatizations of infrastructure rarely go well. We end up with the nuisance of toll roads. And the track record of computer security in private firms has taught us that private enterprise is terrible at proactive security: it is almost entirely reactive.

People who call for capitalism as the solution for everything generally don't understand what capitalism is. We don't have pure capitalism: we have regulated capitalism, with some socialism. Pure capitalism is not stable: it evolves into feudalism,

The drug cartels of South America are not corporations and they are just as large as any large company - or larger.

There are many very large companies today that are not corporations, but are partnerships.

If I am not mistaken (it has been many decades since I read a biography of Andrew Carnegie), the Carnegie Steel Company was not a corporation, but I could be wrong. But in any case, Andrew Carnegie had full control, so regardless of its legal status it acted as a sole proprietorship. Yet it became one of the largest (the largest?) companies in the world, and the infamous Homestead Steel Strike illustrated how ill-behaved the company was, with the many killings at the hands of privately hired Pinkerton guards.

The kingdoms of the feudal days were nothing other than completely unregulated companies. Like the drug cartels of South America, the feudal regimes were created by bullies who made their own families (clans) into the lords of those around them, in effect hiring armies with their favors. Hierarchy breeds greater hierarchy, and these small fiefdoms grew into kingdoms, and employed "sheriffs" to go around and collect taxes so that the kingdoms could continue to live lavishly from the fruits of the labors of the average person, who had by then had all of his land confiscated by the kingdom and who now lived at the "grace of the king".

Yes, that is what true capitalism it. What we have in the US is highly regulated capitalism.

But I agree that corporations are an evil. They allow people to escape personal accountability for their actions.

Any power structure attempts to co-opt and influence other power structures, resulting in open or hidden alliances that enhance the power of each. In the feudal days, there was an alliance between most kingdoms and the church. In today's United States, it is more complicated but very much the same. It always boils down to money and control. Corporations are the main means of making money for wealthy individuals, and so corporations infiltrate government using lobbyists to establish hidden rel

Most of the TSA officers I've seen look like they just stepped out of the ghetto with their shiny new high school diplomas. I don't even think they're salaried employees. It looks like a barely-above-minimum-wage job. You can't expect to get professionals on $10 an hour.

This article one of the better I've read, and the author is right: the TSA is flawed to the core. The TSA also makes the case that law enforcement should never be above the law... sexually assaulting people, stealing people's stuff (taking away contraband) and creating a system of checkpoints with a do not pass list all are contrary to existing law and at least as bad as anything Eastern Europe had to offer in the 1960s and 1970s. If we are exempting law enforcement from sexual assault and theft laws, then we need to change that as there is not one good example where law enforcement should be able to rape, molest or steal from a citizen, EVER. The TSA also has little regard for citizen health as seen in it's apparent lack of safety testing for backscatter detectors and their treatment of people in wheelchairs.

TSA isn't impossible to get rid of. All it takes is one Senator or member of the House to stand up and hold public hearings where citizen after citizen get to tell stories of their wives, children, and grandparents being sexually assaulted, relieved of property or denied access to travel without any kind of right of redress, and the people will be more than happy to get rid of the beast the TSA has become. Personally, I have avoided commercial flights since the TSA became more Stalinist in its tactics because I fear that I would lose my temper and be arrested for questioning the TSA's right to sexually assault, irradiate people, steal stuff and impede other citizens right to freely move. I'll continue to fly privately or not at all (if the boarding+flight+bag claim time is under 5 hours, you usually can drive there in the same time) until this changes. In 2001, I flew over 340,000 miles. Last year, I flew 0 on a commercial airliner.

I hear the government is looking for places they can cut spending. This would be an excellent place to start. The TSA has done absolutely nothing to make us more secure since 9/11, and it's about time people start realizing this fact.

While others have aptly pointed out that the Forbes article advocates (perhaps wrongly) free-market solutions to air security, I've noticed a lot of anti-TSA op-ed pieces in the media of late. Oddly enough it seems that the 95-year-old traveler who was forced to remove her adult diaper, and not the 6-year-old who was molested by TSOs in New Orleans, was the catalyst for massive media criticism. I'd have thought TSA abusing children would have a stronger (albeit only slightly so) impact than TSA abusing ad

Largely I agree with what the article concludes however, the statement:

Some might object that private firms will have incentives to cut corners on safety. It is a legitimate concern, but competitive mechanisms tend to weed this out. It is important to remember too that just because competitive markets might not provide the best of all conceivable worlds doesn’t mean that government intervention can.

is just crazy. Competitive markets have been shown, time and time again, that they will not implement

Sorry Forbes, but public safety is not one of those things that free market economics has any chance of doing better than government standardized or government run schemes.

It'd be almost an exact parallel of health care in the US. An organization responsible for something generally considered in the public interest, but with motivations other than, and sometimes in direct conflict with, that public interest.

As far as grievous things done by the TSA.. yeah, they are grievous and demand changes to only perf

"As far as the specific example.. it's unfortunate, but as soon as TSA says they won't examine women who have had mastectomy is the day certain nefarious organizations start recruiting women who have had a mastectomy to take a defacto one way flight somewhere."

Okay...so? So a bomb goes off, so a plane blows up, so people die, so the airline industry suffers as people fear flying for a while and then everything goes back to normal when the fears die down.

The risk of lost life is neither an excuse nor a justification for violations of the inviolable rights upon which the US was founded. Simply put, freedom trumps lifesaving, all the time, every time, without exceptions.

If we rely on competitive pressure with airports, we're likely to get a situation similar to the ISP situation. Most people who want broadband in the US have a choice of one or two ISPs. If they don't like the one they're with, either they are SOL or have to go with the one remaining one. This means that ISPs can do pretty much anything they want and the customer has no choice.

With airports, how many do you think there would be in any given area? Probably just one. So what "competitive pressure" would

"It is a legitimate concern, but competitive mechanisms tend to weed this out.' - Yea, just look at how the market weeded out ValueJet. Oh wait, they killed 110 people [wikipedia.org], changed their name to AirTran to escape their tarnished brand, and are doing fine now.

So what companies would buy bits of airspace and set the rules in them? So I'd have to make deals with 20 different companies to fly a small plane between two cities? And the communication protocols and frequencies would change as I flew from one company's space to another?

if "doing it by the book" involves [...] telling a 90-year old breast cancer survivor to remove her bra lest it contain explosives [...], then the book needs to be shredded and rewritten.

That the person is 90, a woman, or a breast cancer survivor shouldn't matter. Perhaps the "book" should be rewritten so that a 20-year-old bra-wearing drag queen otherwise in the same situation shouldn't have to remove his bra, just like the old woman shouldn't have to. Randomly deciding some people aren't dangerous is dangerous.

That the person is 90, a woman, or a breast cancer survivor shouldn't matter. Perhaps the "book" should be rewritten so that a 20-year-old bra-wearing drag queen otherwise in the same situation shouldn't have to remove his bra, just like the old woman shouldn't have to. Randomly deciding some people aren't dangerous is dangerous.

May your wife have breast cancer and she be groped every time she goes through the airport and force you to listen to her bitching about it for the next few days after. That is the real boat that people are in right now, but because it is happening to other people and not yourself you can shrug it off. You would be amazed how much your wife will effect your opinion over time.

Passengers at airports get the shit end of the stick right now. You don't deal with this kind of crap on any other form of mass tra

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of association -- that means the freedom to travel and meet whoever you like. We used to laugh at the Soviet Union for requiring "internal passports" to travel. America, we proudly said, was a free country and we do not have "identity papers," much less need to carry them. Now you cannot board an airplane or train without Identity Papers in what we used to call America. The terrorists have won, we have become Nazi Germany, and nobody seems to care.

I think people do care, and their annoyance with the TSA is now surpassing their fear of reprisal by the TSA. Matter of time until some politician realizes he can win office by running on an anti-tsa platform... after that the TSA will go down very quickly.

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Ben Franklin
Bin laden could have never of dreamed of how successful he would have become and must be laughing in his grave that Americans are allowing organizations like the TSA to do this.

Couldn't you all vote to replace the Federal Government if you all really disliked it so much?

Yes, and we have the opportunity to do so with great regularity: 1/3 of the Senate every two years, the entire House of Representatives every two years, the the President every four years. We, as in the US voters, fail to re-elect a new government with equal regularity. Even with in-the-sewer approval ratings, Congressional incumbents tend to enjoy a remarkable re-election rate (I've seen figure in excess of 90%).

I worked with a guy who had the right idea: whomever the incumbent is, vote for the challenger. Don't worry about party affiliation, they're both essentially the same anyway. The effect on the Senate would be less dramatic then the House, since only 1/3 of the Senators are up for re-election at the same time. Can you imagine a House of Representatives where all 435 members were replaced at the same time?

That's what all the protests in Spain (and Greece) are about: We've only got two choices and they're both completely crap. All they seem interested in is diverting taxpayer money into their own personal retirement funds.

Incidentally, in the 2008 presidential election 1,623,078 people voted for a 3rd party out of 131,014,789 votes (not counting "others"). 1,623,078 people voted for what they believe. Do you think that many people will revolt when they have food in their bellies and a roof over their heads? Two party system? That's the defeatist attitude that ensures a two party system. If it doesn't matter who wins, democrat or republican, focus on raising that number. 1,623,078 people voted 3rd party in 2008, in 2012 don't focus on which R or D wins (in presidential elections or congressional elections), focus on raising the number of 3rd party votes. That's the real victory. Every election with less votes for R and D is a triumph for freedom. Democracy sometimes takes a long time to change direction, don't give up now on the idea that men can govern men with ideas instead of violence.

That's because there is a serious dumbing-down of the entire US population. Many of them can't even find or identify the capitol of their own state now, and at least half are religiously-brainwashed morons who will believe any anti-gay, anti-women, and anti-minority hate speech that is thrown their way by the 'Good Ol' Boys' (who strangely enough are usually the ones arrested for doing a transsexual black hooker at the rest stop).

Republicans, Democrats, and all of their kind are DESTROYING this country, and

That's because there is a serious dumbing-down of the entire US population. Many of them can't even find or identify the capitol of their own state now

Irony or intent?

Honestly though, you have to wonder what would happen if kids were actually taught about our history, the reasons, and the people that got us here today in a school building that they don't feel ashamed to go to for fear of a brick falling on their head.

Bush did not get elected nor did he get re-elected, do you really think that the government is really those mindless clownish petty crooks in Washington? The Government is and has been made up by the largest corporations in the world, both in and outside of America! The little crooked scumbags in Washington collect money and read from the scripts provided to them by their corporate masters!

A first post AC who has something insightful to say? Color me shocked. The gist of the editorial isn't that the security theater is ineffective, it is that the government shouldn't be groping grandmas when the free market could provide security without having to grope grandmas. This is nothing but the standard trope of "government is evil" mixed with taking advantage of people not understanding security.

But that's a sham.

#1 Physical profiling doesn't work. Terrorists would just do dry-runs until they find a combination of people and materials that is outside the profile.#2 Behavioral profiling is somewhat better, but requires much more expensive training. It is unlikely to be implemented in all airports.#3 This leaves random sampling. In order for random sampling to work, grandmas and babies have to be groped. Otherwise, we're right back at #1.

Do people have to be groped? Honestly, I'm not up-to-date enough on the latest explosives to know what kind of damage a fake boob or a full diaper's worth of C4 can do to a plane. I'll leave that decision to the experts.

What I can guarantee you though is that the free market doesn't have a better solution for this? Why? Money.

There are two ways to pay for it: airports and airlines pay for it, or travelers pay for it.

If airlines and airports pay for it, the motivation is to keep bringing as many people in as possible - which, since everybody thinks they're innocent and shouldn't be hassled, means a reduction in safety. If individuals pay for it, they'll want to pay for it only when they travel, which is a huge individual expense. The only people able to afford proper security are the wealthy, and at that point, they might as well rent a private jet.

If the American people want airport security, the only way to do it right is through a government agency that takes a little bit from everybody to provide some expensive security to a small subgroup of people.

If the American people want airport security, the only way to do it right is through a government agency that takes a little bit from everybody to provide some expensive security to a small subgroup of people.

Except that it obviously is not working. There have been several breaches of security. The shoe bomber and the Christmas day bomb plots were NOT defeated by security. They failed because the explosives did not work. Proving if anything the higher hurdle crafting an effective portable explosive device; not defeating airport security.

I am not suggesting we should have no airport security but going back to someone asking if you have your bags in sight the whole time, checking ID, and going through a metal detector would be reasonable. We are not getting much in terms of safety for the steps we take beyond that; and that little if any added safety comes with a very high price tag socially and economically.

The only way everyone is going to truly safe from terrorists on planes/trains/buses is if all passengers spend the entire ride naked and handcuffed to their seats.

Pressure sensor. Cabin pressure in flight is something like 7000 feet (I used to have a watch with an altimeter in it), so even a Faraday cage wouldn't guarantee detonation. If some organization wants to blow up an airliner bad enough, they WILL blow it up, because they only have to find a crack to slip through once. Airport security has to get it right EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. How likely is that?

Interviews conducted by experts, not groping and searching by minimum wage automatons, provide effective security. Bags do need to be searched, and passengers screened, but this searching does not need to be intrusive. Anything else is just theatre.

Whether the airport, the government, or the airline directly foots the bill, you still pay for it. You pay for directly in your airline ticket or via taxes which spreads out the cost more.

Some things are not done better by the private sector. Government is not universally incompetent, they actually do many things well. Changing to private security from government security will not magically improve security. If the airlines provide security it will just be done as cheap as possible without breaking any laws. Government regulations ARE required when it comes to health and safety issues. The free market simply does not give the average consumer the required information in a timely manner to prevent health and safety abuses.

Bags do need to be searched, and passengers screenedSays who? Did you read TFA, in particular the part about the number of deaths due to terrorist+airplanes vs. accidental deer strikes?There is no statistical justification for searching any bags or for any kind of passenger screening.Imagine this: suppose after the first WTC bombing (truck in the parking lot), some authority decided the only way to make cities safe is to stop every car, bus, and truck on the way into the city, search all occupants and their luggage, and do to the vehicle. Absolutely ridiculous? Now tell me how the airport+TSA crap is any different.

Who says we do? We did pretty well for a few decades without the TSA or a private firm equivalent. Why the hell do we need them now? Because some loonies pulled one over on us 10 yeas ago? Whoopty-doo. Even the toughest kids on the playground get a black eye from time to time.

I say bring in some bomb sniffing dogs at every airport. Dismantle the scanners and sell the materials on e-bay to pay off some of the debt. Lay-off every single TSA employee. Get on with our lives. I'm tired of living in a country where wanting to travel long distances quickly and conveniently is a reason to suspect someone is a terrorist.

How about the FBI and CIA keeping doing their jobs, and catching the terrorists when they're planning and building up? I mean, we pay them for something, right? The TSA is a boondoggle, a handout to the various companies that supply the machinery to the TSA. There's no increase in security, as evidenced by the number of times that the TSA has let terrorists and weapons through their "checkpoints" while simultaneously harassing little old ladies and sexually assaulting children.

If you want reasonable security, it can be provided very, very cheaply. Walk through Central Park at noon with enough bling to attract any thief worthy of the title. Walk through Central Park again at midnight when nobody else is around. Will you most likely be mugged at noon or at midnight? Noon, of course, right? Certainly not, because a thief is very unlikely to mug someone in a crowded area when there are lots of people around to intervene -- or at the very least, to provide a descripti

Those 2 things will prevent another 9/11 from happening. The TSA is preventing bombs 'on' planes which is *not* what 9/11 was. It was using planes as flying missles. Very. Different. Threats.

Reinforced and 'locked' cockpit doors are things that should have naturally been implemented into design by common sense. That would be passive security that works on its own without further human intervention after fabrication and production.

Yeah, the point of Flight 93 is that terrorists are never going to gain control of the plane again. I was on some of the first post 9/11 flights and at that time the social contract among the guys on the plane was rather explicit. Those first few months everyone made eye contact and there was lots of implied "we've got each other's back" subtext to all of the conversations with strangers on the plane. Anyone trying to hijack a plane with boxcutters post 9/11 would have been torn to pieces before they got the first demand out of their mouth. Heck, even a bunch of AK-47s would have failed, unless they managed to kill every person on the plane.

If there's some doubt as to the intent of an assailant, it is in your interest to mitigate the conflict and get out alive. If you know for sure they intend to kill you and everyone else, your incentive to cooperate drops to zero.

Should have. But common sense and hindsight are 20/20. Most terrorists just wanted a ride to Cuba before 9/11, so there was no need to escalate the situation. When 9/11 turned the planes themselves into weapons, the attitudes of the passengers and the pilots changed. That is all that it took. We don't need anything else.

And "competitive" security let all of the terrorists thru their respective entrances for the four flights. The charade and harassment that is the TSA is both mean-spirited, and rife for abuse. We are free, in these United States. The TSA operates above the rule of law, extra-constitutionally, IMHO.

Because, at the time, no-one saw box cutters as a risk. The security then was aimed at non-suicide terrorists - either trying to put a bomb on an airliner, then leave it, or with a gun which provides a credible hostage situation. No-one had foreseen a certain-suicide attack in which the intention was not to hold the plane hostage but to use it as a missile.

This was not a public/private problem, but a foresight problem. And what we have now is a hindsight problem. The TSA, and other security agencies, are tr

And even if they didn't, I do not think that that is a reason to violate peoples' rights. Some people seem to be greatly overestimating the chances of a terrorist attack actually happening (as well as greatly overestimating how useful the TSA actually is).

Also, 9/11 changed our mindset around hijacking. Previously, everyone on the plane would have thought "They'll get us to the ground safely, they just want us as hostages" so complacency had much lower risk than heroism... but 9/11 showed that some folks want to use the plane as a missile and don't care about the people on board. That means if someone attempts to hijack the plane, even with a bomb, the passengers have plenty of motivation to respond because the risk of complacence is now *higher* than the risk of heroism.

I would add one more thing: The FBI. They've stopped some actual terrorist plots from getting past the planning stages. But if a terrorist manages to elude the FBI, the TSA isn't going to be more than a minor inconvenience.

You mean the times the FBI committed the crime of incitement, to locate punks with neither the brains nor motivation for any type of action let alone terrorism, then filled said delinquent's heads with violent thoughts and grandiose plans of mayhem, and then provide them with fake bombs or weapons right before they arrest the lot? After which, said FBI agents strut on the mass media proclaiming themselves heroes to justify their existence and raise their self esteem?

The cost of always locked cockpit doors is that no longer will children be able to go up and check out an airplane cockpit flown by a real life pilot. That's a pretty sad thing, as someone that did get to check out the cockpit many years ago.

You fail to take into consideration that it could be that no REAL terrorists have tried to hijack a plane and try to use it as a weapon. Could very well be that after the September 11 attacks it was decided that the amount of coordination and effort that went into these attacks might not be possible again. Just because there have been no attempts similar to the ones in 2001 since passengers tried to attack hijackers and reinforced doors have been installed you can't really claim that THAT is what's respon

[blockquote]We still need one additional security measure.SAMs for defense on all buildings taller than 1000'If the WTC had that, there would have been no successful tower strikes.It doubles as defense for a large section of major metropolitan areas.[/blockquote]

So instead of having towers that fell largely within their own footprints we'd have shot down a large airliner flying at low altitude over 2 really populated areas. How is that better?

The Israel's airport security model is very effective. But it is very difficult to follow in the US. You can google for a number of sources such as this [forward.com]. Excerpt:

While American and European security procedures rely mainly on technological solutions for screening luggage and passengers, Israel’s security philosophy is based on a mix of advanced detection devices and personal interaction with the passengers.The multi-layer system begins outside Israel’s biggest port of entry — Ben Gurion airport. Cars approaching the terminal are stopped by guards and asked one or two questions, usually about where they are coming from or what is the purpose of their visit. A nervous response, or one revealing an Arab accent, could trigger further scrutiny even before entering the airport.

When walking into the terminal, visitors pass by another set of security agents searching for passengers behaving suspiciously. The next stop for human evaluation is before the check-in counter, where passengers are required to show their travel documents and answer a series of seemingly standard questions from trained security personnel. (Did you pack your bags by yourself? How long did you spend in Israel? What was the purpose of your visit?) Screeners are interested more in the tone and body language than in the content of passengers’ replies.

This is also the point where profiling takes place: While most Jewish Israeli citizens will be waved through after the brief conversation, others, mainly Israeli Arabs and non-Jewish visitors, will be taken aside for lengthy questioning and a thorough luggage and physical check.

So when a colleague of mine went to catch his plane home, and they asked him where was the latest place he visited, he said "I was in a meeting with the Defence Minister".

So they locked him in a cell with an armed guard outside. After several hours they were persuaded to, you know, actually try the Ministry. Most of whom had gone home. They eventually reached the Defence Minister, who confirmed that indeed Dr X. Y. had been in a meeting with him that morning and had left to catch a plane to the airport.

Now, you would think that in any civilised country an apology would be in order. Not in Israel. Instead, they refused to speak to him or make eye contact, and eventually almost pushed him onto the plane home without a word of apology.

This apologia is unwarranted. Israeli security goons are surely no better, no worse than security goons anywhere. There are just far more of them and they search far more people more thoroughly.

Who cares. Around 3000 people died on 9/11. That's over a decade ago and since then, not much else has happened.

We put up with orders of magnitude more deaths on the highways over the same time period because the states' DMVs are too protective of an individuals "right" to drive a car to keep incompetent morons off the roads. Want to save lives? Have the TSA fondle everyone who is trying to juggle a Big Mac, fries and a milkshake behind the steering wheel.

>Personally, I'm willing to put up with ~300 fatalities a year to not get groped while boarding an airplane. I'd also be willing to fly on an airplane if anyone with a concealed weapons permit was permitted to carry onboard. Go ahead. Try to storm the cockpit with box cutters.

You do realize that if exactly the same security rules and procedures existed today as existed on 9/11, it would be impossible for hijackers to recreate 9/11 (even discounting the fact that the World Trade Towers are gone) or anything similar, don't you?

It isn't the TSA that makes the conditions different, it is the passengers reaction to the hijacking. The TSA does in fact allow all manner of items aboard planes, and planes have numerous items already on board that can be used as improvised weapons. The current security theatre will not stop a determined group from hijacking a plane. What is going to stop them is hundreds of angry passengers fearing for their lives rising up and stopping them, as has been demonstrated [google.ca].

Wow, so Forbes magazine wants to dismantle a government organization and replace it with private industry? What a surprise.

Yes, TSA rules are sort of insane and should be fixed. I'm absolutely mystified by why they think industry would do better. "Some might object that private firms will have incentives to cut corners on safety. It is a legitimate concern, but competitive mechanisms tend to weed this out." Right, Forbes, like they weeded it out before, you know, 9/11 happened? Give me a break.

Or like how you keep seeing stories like passengers accidentally carrying knives onto planes, mock security tests smuggling bombs onto planes that get missed over 90% of the time, theft of items screened, harassment of all kinds?

Fact: the TSA is no more effective than any private security screening company prior to their mandate. Instead, the blank check and supra-legal status gives them the right to demand all sorts of crazy surrenders and procedures while completely ignoring factors that private industry